A guide to the British Education system
by Gaia caecilia
Summary: After getting irritated by a number of stories where the author completely fails to understand the British education system, a friend and I decided the most helpful thing we could do was create a guide for authors to help explain how the education system works in the UK.


A guide to the British schooling system

This story is in fact basically a factual help aid for Harry Potter Authors who are not familiar with the British schooling system. Its co-written with a friend of mine who went to exactly the type of school Hogwarts was based on and the result of us both having experiences of people not understanding how the British system works. Being helpful people we thought writing a polite guide to help out was better than moaning about it. So hopefully this will help anyone trying to get their head round something that is simple and easy for us Brits and apparently makes no sense to anyone else. (Skippy adds that many Brits don't get at least parts of this either)

Stages of Education

Age 5 – 11 Primary education, broken down into infants (5-7 years) and Junior (7-11 years)

Age 11 – 18 Secondary Education, the last two years of which are called sixth form. At the time of writing Harry Potter, students could leave education at 16 legally so the last two years were optional and could either be studied at a school or a sixth form college. Since then the law has changed so that all children between 16 to 18 have to be either in sixth form or doing an apprenticeship.

These two stages, so from age 5 to 18 years are the entire period of time we refer to a student as going to school.

University – this is not school, it is sometimes referred to as uni as well and can be undertaken at any age as long as you have the academic requirements to get in (Usually you have to be 18 minimum to get in although truly exceptional students *extremely* rarely may be allowed in earlier). This is sometimes called tertiary education.

Types of School

The three main type of division in England are Public, Private and State Schools. There is also the side division of Comprehensive and Grammar schools.

State School: What most people in other countries call public – basically the schools are owned and funded by the government and are what most normal people go to. Usually the intake is solely based on how close to the school (the catchment area) a child lives, not on ability and the parents do not pay.

When in the secondary stage most people go to a Comprehensive school – as the name implies, these are schools that take all ability levels.

In some areas there is the option of Grammar Schools, which are ones you have to pass a test to get into and are referred to as selective schools. Not all Grammar Schools are state owned. Some Comprehensive schools have Grammar streams, which are a chunk of students of a certain level of achievement which are educated separately from lower achievers. The history of the Grammar school is long and complicated but by the era of Harry Potter being written they weren't very common as a labour government of the 1970's tried to have them removed. That didn't entirely work, but that is another story all together.

Private School: This one I think has the same meaning the world over – a school where you have to pay fees to get in, with the exception of scholarships, which are children whose families aren't paying but have proven themselves exceptional enough to either have scholarship funds or rich benefactors pay for them.

Public School: This is the one that confuses everyone (even some Brits). In some ways they can be described as a private school in that they are fee paying schools that essentially fit the above description. They are however _very very_ posh Private schools that are all highly historical. The exact requirement to be a public school is that it belongs to the Headmasters Conference, a very exclusive group of specifically 215 schools (all originally all boys schools although some have gone co-ed in the last century or so), as well as some 230 all-girls senior schools which are part of the Girls' Schools association. That is taken directly from the Independent Schools Information service. Hogwarts is not too subtly meant to be a British Public School, especially as most were, if are not now, boarding schools – that is to say ones where you live there if people didn't know the term. There is of course lots of history for why public schools have such a counter intuitive name but if I was going to go into all the history I would never get this thing done.

It is worth adding in at this point that both Private and Public schools sometimes have Grammar School places as well, that are different from scholarship places in that local government fund some places for state school children who pass a test to go to said private institutes. They are different from Scholarship places because children on Grammar School places still get government funded education rather than a privately funded place one way or another. Privately funded/scholarship children generally have grade requirements to keep up to maintain their scholarship places, unlike Grammar School places who only had to pass the initial test. Essentially the difference is, apart from the source of funding, that scholarships usually have more requirements.

JK Rowling never mentions how the funding works in much detail, apart from the odd offhand comment about fees. The assumption is that the 'entrance test' is basically having magic rather than the more mundane options and that there is some type of either state or scholarship funding for poorer students. There is no mention of requirements for achievement (Ron Weasley clearly isn't on a conditional scholarship) but its perfectly plausible that there would be such things.

School terms (semesters).

In dear old Britain we call the chunks the school year is broken up into terms. These are traditionally broken up into three bits, the Autumn (what in the US is called Fall), Spring and Summer terms. Sometimes Autumn is also called the Christmas or Michaelmas term, and Spring the Easter term. These alternative names are obviously related to the Christian festivals associated with terms – most schools that date to before the 16th century in Europe being at least partially church controlled, in the past if not today.

A school year starts on September 1st (though schools don't always go back on that day – most often it is on the first Monday of September unless the school has a teacher training day then).

The Autumn/Christmas term ends just before Christmas usually. There is not specific date and it varies from school to school, area and all sorts of things that are far too numerous to talk about.

The Spring/Easter term starts just after New Year and goes up to usually around Good Friday.

The Summer term starts after the Easter break and goes on till late July for state schools but often ends earlier for Private/Public schools.

At state schools there are usually two week holidays for Christmas and Easter and a five to six week holiday in the summer. Half way through each term is a one week holiday called Half Term, which leads some people to say we have a six term/semester system, though most don't count this. There has also been a move in recent years to even out the school terms and pay less attention to Christian Festivals so sometimes Easter falls as part of the Easter Term rather than at the end.

At Private/public schools (and the currently not relevant and far too complicated sub-division, the Cathedral School) the terms follow approximately the same format but precisely where the ends and starts of terms fall and the length of holidays changes more.

Hogwarts makes no mention of Half Term holidays so I assume they are not a thing but there is definitely a Christmas holiday and vague mentions of Easter as a holiday as well. Since there are also pagan festival at about the same time and it would be reasonable to assume that wizards are either non religious or likely to be pagan as much or more so than Christian then it is safe to assume that their children are given time to go home and celebrate, and thus the terms are approximately the same at Hogwarts.

At this point it is worth bringing up how school year cut offs are done, as I have been asked about this before.

A school year goes from September 1st to August 31st. This is also how the year groups are decided, so someone born on the 31st of August 1990 is in the year group above someone born on the 1st of September 1990. Hence Hermione is in the same year group as Harry even though he is born in the next calendar year.

School years in State School are currently and in the '90's were numbered 1-13, with many schools having a 'reception' year (sometime shortened to Year R) before hand as sometimes students start school at 4, not 5. So basically 5-6 yr olds are in year 1, 6-7 – year 2, 7-8 - year 3 and so on.

Previously when you went into secondary school the year group numbering started again, so works as it does at Hogwarts. Some private/public schools retain this system, or have their own, some have the same system as the current state schools. Being independent schools, they pretty much do as they like.

School Days/Week

State school: At the point of Harry Potter being written the school day at primary starts at 9, finishes at 3.30, with a lunch break. There is also usually one break for the kids to run around in the morning. Some schools also have an afternoon break. At the start of the day there was also usually an assembly, which essentially is where all of the students gather in the school hall and get talked at by either a teacher (often the head teacher) or one of the classes put on a class assembly. Particularly in larger schools where not all the students can fit in the school hall, only part of the school will attend assembly on any given day, the others having what is usually called class time, and its at this point class assemblies are often planned although it can also be put aside for reading time or allowing the class to socialise.

Secondary School starts at 8.30, ends at 3.30, with a lunch hour and either one or two breaks in the day. The students move around the school for classes to different classrooms and have different teachers for each subject. They will sometimes also have assemblies or class time (sometimes called form time, don't ask me why they renamed it, I've never worked that out) in the morning but its rarer.

School weeks are from Monday to Friday.

Public/Private School: During the same time period the majority of public and private schools had school days which lasted from 8.30am until 4pm. The day starts with either house meetings or full school assemblies, classes would generally start around 9am, morning break would occur between 10.15 and 11 depending on the school, this is generally a 15 min or half hour break. Lunch break lasts somewhere between one and two hours depending on the school. Some schools have an afternoon break also, this is generally dependant on how early the lunch break finishes, more primary schools have the afternoon break than senior schools, this is generally because of attention spans, and also in cases of schools which have junior and senior schools on the same site the younger students have their lunch break while the older ones are still in morning classes. Many public and private preparatory schools will base their classes in one classroom, but start moving them to specific classrooms for certain classes, and specialist teachers for many of their subjects, so by the time they move up to senior school they are used to moving around the school for classes.

Most private school weeks are from Monday to Friday.

Some public schools are Monday to Friday, but many of them are Monday to Saturday. At some schools the Saturday lessons are only for the morning with sport in the afternoons, others are full timetable all day.

Exams

There are two sets of Exams that are important in the British Education system, the GCSE and the A-level, or more precisely, those were what was available in the majority of the UK. This has changed since with the introduction of the Baccalaureate, although that came in after we finished school (about a decade after Harry Potter ends give or take) so neither of us entirely get that particular exam method and it is not relevant as it only becomes a thing way later on. Scotland does things differently and I haven't been able to make head nor tale of what they were doing in the 90's, or now for that matter. However I'm fairly sure though it was only in '98, after the end of the Harry Potter series that the Scottish government gained independent control of their education system and made it stunningly confusing. Either way, we'll stick to the rest of the 1990's British system's way of doing it since its clearly equivalent to the Hogwarts exam system.

GCSE (general certificate of secondary education) – taken at the end of year 11 (school year equivalent of 5th year at Hogwarts) traditionally and basically the muggle equivalent of OWLs.

A-level – traditionally taken at the end of year 13 (7th year). At the time of the writing of Harry Potter, as previously mentioned, you could drop out at the end of Year 11 (5th year) and not take these, there are also vocational options available, unlike their Wizarding equivalent, the NEWTs, which appear both compulsory and a mix of academic and vocational.

Post secondary education isn't really discussed but there are implications that there are degree equivalent apprenticeships available and otherwise employers train their intake to the job. There is no mention of university, although the post Hogwarts apprenticeships seem to fill this gap.

For reference, by medieval tradition, a person starts off as an apprentice, who gets paid a little for work done and does menial duties for their Master (either gender, apprenticeships are frequently, especially in the Germanic realms, not sexist) as part of the return for an education. Once they have reached a certain skill level they become journeymen, who are paid more and can drop the menial tasks. They only progress on from Journeyman status when they produce a 'master work', basically something special in whatever they are apprenticing in which shows they are worthy of the title master. Considering how slow to develop the wizarding world often is its entirely possible this, or quite likely a watered down version to take into account the high entry level, is still functional.

Graduation.

One thing I have seen as common is adding in a graduation ceremony, referring to a student gaining their diploma when they leave or whatever.

British schools do not have diplomas or degrees – those are solely university terms. We also do not have any variety of school graduation. You don't get a piece of paper to say you successfully finished school. The GCSE/A-level results fill in that gap. At state schools the students are no longer at school from the moment they've finished their last exam, whether that is GCSE or A-level. The exam results will either get posted to the student or they come in to pick up their results during the summer when said results are released but that is it. There is no ceremony, no Valedictory speech, no nothing. Some schools may have a leavers ball or other similar party. My own school, before we left for study leave before the exams had a leavers assembly where they did a bit of nostalgia of our school years, teachers said good bye to us and then herded us out before we could cause any more havoc. Traditionally we would all prank the school on our last day as it was both our last opportunity and there was little chance of them being able to punish us. Schools sometimes have other informal traditions like getting people to sign/write messages either on your school shirt or in some variety of book, whether that was a pretty note book the students brought in or the school had something like a year book. Said shirt/book is generally kept as a souvenir.

Glossary of Term

So we realised that not-British-people or even British people who only experienced part of this, may not have a clue what some of the words mean and so here is a glossary to explain these. If you send in requests for terms we've missed or you've come across and don't get we may update.

Prep School – A preparatory school (or, shortened: prep school) in the United Kingdom is a fee-charging independent primary school that caters primarily for children up to approximately the age of 13. The term "preparatory school" is used as it _prepares_the children for the Common Entrance Examination to secure a place at a private independent secondary school, including the British public schools. (Yes, I stole the definition off Wikipedia, which puts it in nice simple terms I did not feel the need to edit)

Junior/Senior – Term that varies depending on school type, but is usually used as an age distinction within a school. At state schools it can indicate age ranges of schooling as mentioned previously or within the secondary school can indicate a smaller range of age distinctions. At my secondary school the Junior years were year 7-9 (aka kids not doing life-important exams) and Senior was 10-13 (kids doing the important exams, also the ones who'd had some choice over subjects studied)

At Private and public schools the terms can also be used for age distinctions of varying types, depending on the age range the school teaches, for instance some schools have an age range of 5-16 and so Senior/Junior would indicate the difference between 'primary' and 'secondary' aged children. Upper/lower school can also be used as alternative terminology. Yes it gets confusing.

Nursery – basically what we normally call what a lot of places know as Kindergarden or similar term. Pre-school also is used. Essentially a place parents have the option of sending kids below compulsory schooling age.


End file.
